Edward Jones UX Evaluation

Three of us checked Edward Jones' advisor prototypes separately against the same ten rules of thumb and found 44 places advisors would get stuck, before any software was built.

One feature, start to finish The audit's 44 friction points

  • Research found the real problem
  • Design design not shown here
  • Measurement measurement not shown here

An audit, so research only. We delivered a report, not fixes, and there are no numbers from afterward because the software wasn't built yet.

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Context

Why did this work matter?

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Edward Jones had clickable prototypes for opening a client's account and reading financial statements. Before paying developers, the firm wanted to know where advisors would get stuck, ranked by how badly.

Assumptions

What did we believe going in?

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We assumed three reviewers checking each screen alone, against the same rules, would give ratings the firm could rank fixes by, not one person's taste.

Research

How was it tested?

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Like a home inspector with a checklist, each of us went through the prototypes alone against Jakob Nielsen's ten usability rules of thumb, noting every rule each step broke and how badly.

Discoveries

What did we learn?

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We found 44 trouble spots. The same ones kept recurring: read-only information in boxes that looked typeable, a main button no more important than the rest, and warnings far from what they warned about.

Accessibility audit page: a table of guidelines against a SPECIFIED column (structure and hierarchy NO, keyboard navigation NO, screenreader text NO, images and video NO, colors NO, references YES), beside recommendations naming what each missing guideline should illustrate, from managing keyboard focus to complying with AA contrast ratios.
None of the five accessibility rules was written down in the design system.

Intervention

What changed because of it?

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The report gave every problem its severity, the rule it broke, a marked-up screen and a specific fix, aimed at the design system where possible so one fix worked everywhere.

Findings page titled “Issues in Multiple Areas” for the Account Opening prototype: the screen at left, then three findings, each labeled NOTABLE with the heuristic it violates; “Select all” links not grouped with the checkboxes they control, secondary actions styled inconsistently as links or buttons, and “Apply” buttons that duplicate the “Save and Continue” primary action, beside annotated crops and a recommendation in italics.
Three Account Opening problems, each with its severity, rule and fix.

Outcome

What was the impact?

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The firm got 44 ranked problems before spending developer time. The starting scores were never checked again, and the report names its limits: we weren't financial advisors and could only check the tasks each prototype showed.

Also on this project

Read the full study →

  • A design system audit across seven areas, from accessibility to typography.

  • The same review on Financial Statements, where Save looked no more important than Cancel.

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